also known as Blood Devils

Beast of Blood1971

This nugget from the golden age of English-language island exploitation movies barely waits two minutes before the lurid fun begins by springing a riot of shipboard axe-murders. They’re committed by grotesque zombie-type “green men” whose rumored existence soon lures a medical scientist (played by John Ashley) back to “Blood Island.” He hopes to investigate them as does his uninvited companion, a nosey-if-beautiful newspaper reporter, Celeste Yarnell. She’s promptly kidnapped. A search party following her trail deep into the isle’s jungle interior discovers Dr. Lorca conducting grisly human experiments. This third entry in a loose horror-fantasy series commenced by Eddie Romero’s in 1968 with MAD DOCTOR OF BLOOD ISLAND (and completed in 1972 by THE TWILIGHT PEOPLE which featured the U.S. blaxploitation superstar Pam Grier as “Ayesa, the Panther Woman”) adds a dash of THE BRAIN THAT WOULDN’T DIE to its ongoing narrative variation on THE ISLAND OF DR. MOREAU. - Dennis Harvey